The Senate Democrats finally went there, voting to change the chamber's rules in what the New York Times called "the most fundamental shift in the way the Senate functions in more than a generation".

The "nuclear option" approved today will allow the president's executive and judicial nominees (except for those to the supreme court) to receive up-or-down votes in the Senate without having to first clear the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. That's huge, although not as huge as majority leader Harry Reid could have made it: it will still require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster on pieces of legislation.

After such a major shift, however, the world hardly seems different. That's because the nominees whose filibusters led to this parliamentary shake-up – namely three nominees to the powerful DC circuit court of appeals – weren't being filibustered for anything regarding their background or their qualifications. These were the sort of bad-faith filibusters which have been all too common during the Obama administration, designed either to keep the administration from functioning effectively, by being understaffed, or to maintain ideological advantages on powerful executive or judicial bodies.

Now positions can be filled by qualified candidates, as positions are designed to be. While Republicans moan and groan about the death of the Senate, it's an indictment of their strategy of filibuster abuse in recent years that such a major rule change was needed to bring the chamber back to a baseline functioning level.

And yet it remains a bit surprising that Reid went through with this. Occasionally over the last decade, when filibuster overuse led to a bottlenecking of nominees awaiting confirmation votes, the majority has threatened majority-vote changes to the rules to weaken the filibuster. Typically a "gang" of bipartisan senators, deeming the threat credible, would come together at the last minute to strike a gentlemen's agreement on moving forward with stalled nominations.

It's unlikely that the Democrats' move today will matter much in upcoming elections. Voters have a limited understanding of Senate rules, for starters. That is why such abuse had been allowed to linger so long. Preserving parliamentary procedures to slow down nominations for slots within the federal bureaucracy is not really a fiery, drum-banging priority for a majority of citizens. Some (even many, or perhaps most) may actually like their national legislature not getting gummed up over every name thrown its way, if they choose to care at all.

Instead, the big question going forward is: now that a precedent for simple-majority votes to change filibuster rules has been set, how far will it go?

Eliminating the 60-vote filibuster on legislation would be a much more profound change to the functioning of government than today's actions on appointments will be. Today's Senate Republican minority, and a future Democratic minority, can live with the fact that it will no longer be able to stop any and all appointments for the haziest of reasons, or at least to stick it to the president.

But no Senate minority would enjoy being on the short side of a purely majoritarian chamber, watching idly – like a House of Representatives minority does now – as the majority swiftly does its own bidding on any and all pieces of legislation. The ability to filibuster legislation in the Senate is by far the strongest tool for the minority in government today. Some are quick to say that pure, simple majority rule in both chambers would be the most democratic system. But the ability of an engaged, vocal minority to stop or slow down the various plots and plans of passive majoritarianism can be a noble feature of democracy as well.

Minority leader Mitch McConnell, in his furious recriminations of the majority on Thursday, addressed Democrats, warning that "you may regret this a lot sooner than you think”. In other words, when Senate Democrats are in the minority, as they may well be come January 2015. Reid mentioned in his speech before the vote that he and his conference would be fine with a Republican president's nominees getting simple-majority votes in a Republican-controlled chamber. Maybe so.

But what if Republicans hold the House, Senate, and White House in 2017 and want to, say, repeal the Affordable Care Act? Maybe McConnell, even if Reid never made the changes he did today, would go ahead and destroy the filibuster on legislation because the goal was worth it. A lot of liberals argue that today: “Well, McConnell's probably going to get rid of the filibuster anyway the next chance he gets, so the Democrats might as well do it now while they're in power.”

Today's rules change, though, will give McConnell more cover to those more serious, additional limitations to the filibuster, if he ever gets the chance. Picture the scene in early 2017, when a Democratic Senate minority filibusters a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, leading McConnell & Co to eliminate the filibuster on legislation. “I didn't want to have to do this,” he'll say, “but Democrats started this with their own changes to the filibuster, and now I'm just finishing the job.

Then – not today – will we really have a fundamental change on our hands.